In the English language, there are essentially three hundred seventy nine (379) letters, and letter combinations, which phonetically express basically only forty-four (44) sounds. Thus, in many instances, a given language sound may be graphically expressed with various different letters and letter combinations making for a great deal of redundancy in the graphic expression of the English language. This built-in redundancy is not limited to the English language, but, rather is found in other languages. Further, the English language, and to some extent all languages, are replete with silent letters and irregular means of graphically expressing various sounds which defy the traditional rules of pronunciation and, thus, do not covey the appropriate pronunciation of the word to a reader. Consequently, when learning to read, it is not enough to learn the basic rules of pronunciation. One must deal with a seemingly endless list of irregularly expressed words, to a large extent by simply memorizing the correct pronunciation.
Therefore, in the teaching of reading skills, it is desirable to have a means for conveying the proper pronunciation of a word regardless of its spelling or graphical depiction. The pronunciation keys found in various dictionaries provide some assistance in ascertaining the proper pronunciation of a word, but for the most part these keys consist of the application of symbols to the traditionally expressed word so as to provide clues to pronunciation. However, such pronunciation keys are complex in and of themselves and require the mastering of numerous graphic representations of the various sounds or the repetitive and exhausting resort to pronunciation tables to ascertain the proper pronunciation. This complexity makes such pronunciation keys impractical for the very individuals who require pronunciation assistance the most, those individuals being beginning readers or those wishing to master a second language.
Therefore, it is an object of the present invention to provide a phonetic language translation method for translating a word of any one of various languages into a graphically expressed phonetically correct translation of such word.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a phonetic language translation method for conveying proper pronunciation of a word to a reader utilizing a minimum number of characters and symbols to express the various sounds of a given language.
It is yet another object of the present invention to provide a phonetic language translation method which may be easily learned and utilized by a non-reader or one who possesses limited reading skills.